Leaving Ferraris in the dust

François Gissy likes bikes, rockets, and speed. When you combine all three, you get this incredibly fast-accelerating rocket-powered bike - designed by his friend Arnold Neracher - with which Gissy has been breaking record after record for a few years.

Youtube/Screen capture

Propulsion for the rocket bicycle is provided by a rocket system built by a Swiss company called Exotic Thermo Engineering. It is powered by liquid hydrogen peroxide (the tank can contain 12,5 litres de H2O2 at 86% concentration) that generates steam at 650 degrees Fahrenheit.

So literally, it could be said that this bicycle is both hydrogen-powered and steam-powered.

Youtube/Screen capture

Francois' latest record took place at the Circuit Paul Ricard located at Le Castellet in South of France on November 7. Just look at those numbers:

Peak speed: 333 km/h (207 mph) attained after around 300 meters

Quarter mile elapsed time: 6.8 seconds

Thrust of the rocket engine: 4.2 kN (428 kgf)

0 to 100 km/h in 1.1 second

0 to 200 km/h in 2.5 seconds

0 to 300 km/h in 4.3 seconds

0 to 333 km/h in 4.8 seconds

Peak acceleration: 3.1 g

Peak deceleration (due to the drag): -1.8 g

Zero to sixty miles per hour in 1.1 second! Whoa!

In the video the rocket bike drag races against a Ferrari Scuderia (650-horsepower). It barely had time to get going before the bike was a rapidly shrinking dot on the horizon...

Francois says that he intends to keep breaking records, and he's already working on a new rocket-powered bike for 2015. Its name is Spine Crusher... That should give you an idea of what it'll be capable of.

Here's last year's record on the rocket bicycle (285 KPH/177 MPH):

And just for fun, here's an older video of the rocket bike going against a 436-horsepower Corvette (guess who wins?):